Industryweek 14241 13953bobknott

Hosted ERP Done Right

April 10, 2007
SaaS strategy helps Control Center LLC overcome ERP replace/upgrade paralysis.

Bob Knott, head of engineering technology for industrial controls manufacturer Control Center LLC, recounts how his company overcame ERP "replace or upgrade" paralysis with a robust, multifunction software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution from Glovia Services.

The ERP system that Control Center had implemented back in the late 1990s was becoming untenable as living "glitch to glitch" became too difficult -- not to mention too expensive. "We chose to terminate our ERP maintenance contract because of cost, so we were serviceless for about three years," Knott remembers. "When we stumbled it was our problem, and each time we had to go out on the street and get third-party support at high cost."

Control Center's service provider at the time, Glovia International, was in the process of launching GSInnovate its own ERP SaaS software solution through a new SaaS division, Glovia Services. Knott says GSInnovate has allowed him to redeploy resources in a more value-added way (perhaps most significantly allowing his lead engineer to give up IT troubleshooting for good). The Web-hosted application took a mere 40 days to implement, and is now used for purchasing, inventory management, MRP and support for a range of financial operations, giving Control Center real-time order views and giving Knott some much-needed peace of mind.

Bob Knott

"When it came down to it, we decided to keep our ERP system in the hands of those who do it for a living and focus our attention on what we do for a living. As the head of these types of technology integration projects, I don't usually expect things to go this well."

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